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Character Progression
This section will cover how to progress your character using the Experience Points (XP) awarded at the end of each gaming section. Improving Your Character In a very general sense, you will use the Experience Points awarded to you to improve your character's existing Attributes or Skills or buy new talents. Here is a general reference for experience points cost. As you can see, there are not many "aspects" to your character that you can directly improve with XP. However, your Attributes and Skills will affect many other aspects (as in Secondary Attributes) to your character and will improve as your Attributes and Skills improve. Improving Attributes As stated above it costs 10 times the desired score in XP to raise an attribute. However, there are a few more details. #You cannot "skip ahead." If your attribute is 3, you have to improve to 4 before you can improve to 5. 50 XP points will NOT take you from 3 to 5, but 40 of those 50 XP will take you to 4. #You cannot exceed your racial maximum. For all the starting races that is 6. To go beyond 6, you can only use magical or scientific (i.e. cybernetics or bionics) means. Apart from that, the rules are pretty simple. As mentioned, any change in Attributes will affect all related Skills and Secondary Attributes. Secondary Attributes can only change/improve when Attributes are improved. No amount of XP will raise any Secondary Attribute. Improving Skills and Specializations As stated above it costs 3 times the desired score in XP to raise a Skill or Specialization. Like with Attributes, there are more details. #You cannot "skip ahead." If the Skill has 3 ranks, you must raise it to 4 before you can raise it to 5. #The Skill cannot be higher than its governing attribute. #Any Specialization cannot be higher than its Broad Skill, but may be equal to it. For example, if you have 5 ranks in Computer, you cannot have 6 ranks in Programming, but you may have 5 or less. The exceptions to the above rules are Magic, Thaumaturgy, and Psionics. They may exceed their governing Attribute, but when they do the cost raises dramatically. Still, the limit to these skills is half above their governing attribute. So if the character's Intelligence is 6, they cannot have a Magic skill higher than 9. Regardless of the maximum, the XP cost to raise Magic, Thaumaturgy, and Psionics higher than 6 remains the same. Here is the chart. Though the Broad Skills of Magic, Thaumatugry, and Psionics may raise above its governing Attribute, any specialization under these Broad Skills cannot. The Specialization CANNOT be higher than the governing attribute. For example, Rodger the Mage has an Intelligence of 6 and has raised his Magic skill to 8. Any Specialization under Magic that Rodger has CANNOT be higher than 6 (Rodger's Intelligence score). Later on, Rodger raises his Intelligence by magic means to an 8. With XP points, he raises his Magic skill to 11. He can now raise his Specializations under Magic to 8, but now he needs more XP since he just spent it all raising his Magic skill. Buying New Skills and Specializations You can start a new skill by spending 10 XP points. This will start the Skill at Rank 1. Of course, since no one can have less than 1 in any Attribute, your skill starts there regardless, but is of course limited by the Governing Attribute's score. To go from rank 1 to rank 2 will cost 6 XP. Specializations are exactly the same. Since they can only be equal to or less than the Broad Skill then you could conceivably have a Broad Skill at 1 and a Specialization at 1 as well. This will cost you 20 XP. Humans If you are playing in a game setting that allows the races listed in Character Creation, then Humans receive a -2 to the XP cost of raising any and all Skills and Specializations. This applies only to Skills and the above listed rules for Skills. The cost cannot be reduced to 0 XP, but this should only occur, or have the possibility of occurring, at Character Creation. As stated under the Buying New Skills and Specializations, it costs 10 XP to start a skill at 1 and another 6 XP to raise it to rank 2. The Human discount will not reduce either of these to 0 XP. The discount DOES apply to each "rank up." This means that even though you might have 16 XP to spend, which is possible since most games will award you anywhere from 15 to 20 XP, it will only cost a Human 12 XP to buy a new skill and raise the rank to 2 ( 10 XP - 2 to buy the new skill + 6 XP - 2 to raise the rank to 2 = 12). Buying New Talents This is relatively straightforward. Each Talent has listed under its description an amount of XP it costs to buy that talent. Of course, you must meet any prerequisites before you can spend the XP and acquire the Talent. All the same, if you have the XP and meet the prerequisites, you can buy as many new Talents as you want and/or can afford. Of course, the higher tiers are a bit pricey, so you may not be buying that many at a time. Buying Talents from Multiple Paths As mentioned in Character Creation, you cannot buy Talents from other Paths unless you took the boon Many Paths to the Mountain. This applies only to Path of War, Path of Shadow, Path of Magic, Path of Piety, and Path of the Mind talents. Once you have the boon, you can buy as my talents as you qualify for and have XP. Skill Paths do not have this restriction and you can buy as many Talents from as many Skill Paths as you can afford/qualify for. If you are playing in a setting that disallows the "main paths" and only has Skill Paths, then the boon Many Paths to the Mountain is superfluous.